A firestorm of global and regional criticism has erupted after Israel announced that a controversial rabbi closely associated with the mass demolition of Palestinian residential structures in Gaza will receive one of the country’s highest civilian honors: lighting a ceremonial torch at the national Independence Day event. The annual celebration, scheduled this year for April 21, marks the 1948 establishment of the Israeli state — a date Palestinians commemorate as the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” which saw the forced displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral lands.
The selection of Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, 54, for the honor came from populist right-wing Israeli Transport Minister Miri Regev, who named him as one of 12 torch-lighters chosen to represent citizens deemed to have made exceptional contributions to Israeli society. The high-profile ceremony is routinely attended by top Israeli government officials and senior military leadership.
Beyond his work in Gaza, Zarbiv’s own background is rooted in contested occupied territory. He currently serves as a rabbinical court judge in Ariel, an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank that is illegal under international law. He resides in Beit El, another illegal West Bank settlement, where his personal residence was constructed illegally on privately owned Palestinian land. Just last week, an Israeli judicial oversight body received a formal complaint alleging that Zarbiv’s home violates Israeli domestic law as well, since it was built outside the officially marked boundaries of the settlement.
Zarbiv gained nationwide notoriety in Israel during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, where he spent more than a year working as an operator of a D9 bulldozer tasked with demolishing Palestinian civilian homes. He openly documented his work on camera, often filming himself while flattening residential structures while reciting passages from the Torah and blowing a traditional shofar. His incendiary public comments have drawn widespread condemnation: in one widely circulated video, with the rubble of destroyed Palestinian homes visible in the background, he declared, “You will have nothing left” and “We will flatten you and destroy you.” In another recording, he claimed Palestinian homes held “profound impurity” that required total destruction, arguing that “not a single tree is untouched by it.”
In a January 2025 interview, Zarbiv claimed he demolished “50 homes on average per week” during his time in Gaza, describing the practice of bulldozing civilian structures as “an art form we’ve acquired.” He made further inflammatory remarks about displaced Palestinians, stating, “They have nothing to return to in Rafah and Jabalia… tens of thousands of families have no papers, childhood photos, ID cards, no homes – they have nothing.” He also claimed that “thousands of Palestinians were killed and left uncollected, to the point that they were reportedly eaten by cats and dogs because no one came to retrieve the bodies.”
His notoriety has grown to the point that his name has entered colloquial Israeli usage as a verb: “to Zarbiv” now means to flatten a structure, in reference to his work in Gaza. A viral sticker depicting Zarbiv atop a D9 bulldozer has circulated widely across Israeli social media. Most recently, new footage has emerged showing Zarbiv participating in home demolitions in southern Lebanon, expanding his documented record of property destruction outside Gaza.
Zarbiv has long faced legal pushback for his actions. In 2024, the Hind Rajab Foundation filed a formal complaint against him with the International Criminal Court (ICC), calling for his immediate arrest. The legal organization submitted substantial evidence drawn from Zarbiv’s own public interviews and social media posts, accusing him of violating the Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute through alleged attacks on civilian populations, the deliberate destruction of civilian property not justified by military necessity, and the intentional targeting of civilian infrastructure. Middle East Eye reached out to the Israeli Embassy in London to request comment on the controversy, but has not yet received a response.
Leading Israeli media have also decried the decision to honor Zarbiv. In a recent front-page editorial, leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz argued that the choice of Zarbiv sends a clear message to the international community about current Israeli state values. “A country that chooses to honour and esteem someone who has become a symbol of the flattening of Gaza is telling the world that it sees him and his values as deserving respect and as representing the state,” the editorial read. It added, “Zarbiv indeed deserves to light an Independence Day torch: not because he is worthy of the honour, but because Israel has lost its way, its moral compass and its conscience. Using the Hebrew conjugation, it has ‘Zarbived’, if you will, Gaza and is proud of it. What Israel has done in Gaza is an indelible stain. Zarbiv represents the image of the state today.”
This reporting comes from Middle East Eye, an independent outlet specializing in unrivaled on-the-ground coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and surrounding regions.